Period 4
Humanities 1100
Hardy
1. The author of the work is Alan Thein Durning who was born in 1964 and is still alive
today. He graduated from Oberlin College, and after became a researcher at the
worldwatch Institute of Washington D.C.. After graduating he went back to Seattle and
Conundrum is defined as a problem without a real solution, and associates that with
consumption. After reading this work it is a very accurate description of what the text is
about.
3. The was written in the early 1990s. Being a person of monitoring the environment, Alan
Thein would know as good as anybody about the problem of a rising population, and a
4. The intended audience is everybody, but especially the consumer. Those who are
5. Sidney Quarrier contemplated the conundrum that is consumption. He thought of his own
impact, how much he bought, used, and wasted all sorts of things in his everyday life.
Then his pondering took him to the thought of the global industrial networks impact on
the world as they also are massive consumers. Sid thought of all the things wasted in the
world to get the new car, new tv, better clothes ect. While wasting the perfectly good
slightly older ones. The way most americans live cannot be practiced by the entire
worlds population. Our planet cant sustain such demand of resources. Sid emphasizes
farmers who if there wasnt a demand would abuse the land for themselves due to
6. The work makes the point that the way we (Americans) live cannot be openly practiced
by everyone on this planet. It would take several worlds to compensate for such a
demanding lifestyle for billions of people. The problem of consumption doesnt have a
clear solution, but somewhere to start is to recognize how much you affect the
environment and how much you really consume. If everyone were to do that then maybe,
just maybe, our planet could sustain everyone living at a level similar to most Americans
today.
7. I completely agree with this text. It explains the many problems associated with
consumption extremely well, from multiple angles. This problem is often times
overlooked, and yet it is something that if we dont do anything about will make the
situation even worse. The world is changing, as the gap between developed and third
world countries decreases, the worlds resources are also rapidly decreasing. Our world
cant sustain 7 billion consumers, but it can certainly sustain 7 billion conservers.